Falling Asleep Driving Commercial Truck With Sleep Apnea
Introduction
Staying awake driving in Oregon and other states means staying alive. This is a slogan used to describe a research study on sleep apnea sponsored by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the American Transportation Research Institute of the American Trucking Associations (ATA). The research project addressed the prevalence of sleep apnea among commercial truck drivers, potential risk factors, and its impact on driving performance.
This Tech Brief summarizes the project's final report.[A Study of Prevalence of Sleep Apnea Among Commercial Truck Drivers.]
Background
Sleep apnea is a major contributor to daytime drowsiness—a condition that could prove deadly for commercial truck drivers and involved passenger vehicles. It is a condition where, during sleep, a narrowing or closure of the upper airway causes repeated sleep disturbances leading to poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness. Since excessive sleepiness can be a consequence of sleeping disturbances, drivers with sleep apnea have compromised driving performance leading to increases in the risks of crashes.
According to the Divided Attention Driving Task, a research test designed to mimic driving performance, individuals with sleep apnea perform, on average, as poorly as individualswhose levels of blood alcohol concentration exceed the legal limit. The results of this study show that the prevalence rates of sleep apnea among commercial truck drivers are similar to sleep apnea rates found in other general populations. This is in contrast to the extremely high prevalence rates reported previously by the Stoohs study. [Stoohs, Sleepand Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Commercial Long-Haul Truck Drivers, 1995]
Purpose
This research study had three objectives:
To estimate the prevalence of sleep apnea among a sample of commercial truck drivers living within a 50 mile radius of the University of Pennsylvania
To examine the relationship in commercial truck drivers between severity of sleep apnea and decreased function related to driving performance
To develop a profile of an overall sample of commercial truck drivers with regard totheir sleep apnea-related characteristics and risks
Methodology
To estimate prevalence of sleep apnea in a sample population, researchers had to decide the following: sample population to be studied, higher risk and lower risk categories for likelihood of sleep apnea, placement category for in-laboratory testing, and methods to be used for in-laboratory testing.